Search Cleveland.com

Sign in toCleveland.com

Ohio lawmakers must again shut door to local minimum-wage hikes: editorial

Updated on June 7, 2017 at 11:13 AMPosted on June 7, 2017 at 5:29 AM

Members of Raise Up Cleveland along with the Service Employees International Union held a rally in April 2016 in front of a McDonald's restaurant on East 30th Street and Carnegie Avenue in Cleveland in support of raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. A judge last week overturned a 2016 state law barring the Cleveland initiative and other moves to create a patchwork of local minimum wages in Ohio. The judge found the law violated the state constitution's one-subject rule.

Members of Raise Up Cleveland along with the Service Employees International Union held a rally in April 2016 in front of a McDonald's restaurant on East 30th Street and Carnegie Avenue in Cleveland in support of raising the city's minimum wage to $15 an hour. A judge last week overturned a 2016 state law barring the Cleveland initiative and other moves to create a patchwork of local minimum wages in Ohio. The judge found the law violated the state constitution's one-subject rule.(Lisa DeJong, The Plain Dealer, File, 2016)

Making employers pay a higher minimum wage inside Cleveland -- or within any other locality in the state -- would not just be wrong and economically destructive. It also would abrogate the clear intent of the Ohio Constitution's language setting a uniform minimum wage in the state. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said as much in an advisory opinion last year.

The logical consequence of a double-digit percentage increase in the minimum wage just within Cleveland's 82.5 square miles -- where unemployment was 7.2 percent in April -- would be to drive jobs into the other 44,740 square miles of Ohio. Statewide, April joblessness was 4.4 percent -- 5.6 percent in Cuyahoga County.

That's the last outcome anyone should want.

Little wonder that Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson and the Cleveland Building and Construction Trades Council both opposed last year's push by the Service Employees International Union, through a group named Raise Up Cleveland, to set a $15 minimum wage inside Cleveland.

Substitute Senate Bill 331 began life in May 2016 as a measure "to regulate dog sales and licenses pet stores." Besides adding the minimum-wage ban at Cleveland's request, legislators slathered onto the bill such unrelated amendments as limits on Ohio cities' and villages' power to regulate where phone companies place "micro cellular" equipment. The cellular amendment led scores of Ohio's municipalities to sue.

In spiking all but the animal-welfare sections of SB 331, Common Pleas Judge Richard Frye made the right call. Still, his ruling reopens a Cleveland minimum wage debate that facts and logic long ago refuted. Lawmakers now must shut the door.

Editor's note: This editorial was corrected at 11:15 a.m. to remove an erroneous reference to the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor's position on the Cleveland minimum wage. The federation supported it.

About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.

* Have something to say about this topic? Use the comments to share your thoughts, and stay informed when readers reply to your comments by using the Notification Settings (in blue).